Hans Lahlum - The Human Flies

Patricia pushed her plate out of the way and leaned over the table towards me.

‘Above all else, there are two things you must try to establish in Sweden, both of which may be decisive. First, note down all the known details regarding Sara Sundqvist and what may have happened to her parents. And second, everything you can find out about Deerfoot, which may help us to discover his identity. Now that we finally have confirmation of his existence and had found someone who has actually met him, it will be interesting to see where it leads.’

We raised our glasses to that and ate our rice cream in comfortable silence. Before I left, Patricia asked me to phone her from Sälen if she could be of any help and to come here as soon as I returned to Oslo. I promised to do so with a light heart. I did not like to say so, but thinking about where the investigation might have been today without Patricia’s vision was a terrifying thought. If I would ever have managed to work out how the murder was committed was an open question. A creeping minor worry was the extent to which Patricia might want her role to be highlighted, but thus far she had said nothing to indicate a desire for public recognition.

What had dominated until now was the increasing desire to find the murderer. I recaptured some of the excitement from my first hare hunt when I was a youth and felt an ever more obsessive drive to lock the handcuffs round the wrists of this mysterious person who had taken the lives of both Harald Olesen and Konrad Jensen without being noticed. Because Konrad Jensen had also been murdered, I no longer doubted that for a minute. In fact, it was almost shameful to think that I had resisted accepting Patricia’s reasoning for so long.

Before leaving, I said to her that I would do a final check of the building before driving to Sälen. She nodded her approval. It was perfectly reasonable to ask the residents to keep themselves available for questioning from Friday afternoon over the weekend. However, she strongly advised me not to tell them where I was going in the meantime. Any references to Sweden or Sälen might alarm one or more of the residents. We parted in high spirits, full of optimistic expectations for what tomorrow would bring.

The evening round at 25 Krebs’ Street was without drama. The building seemed to be poised in the calm before the storm, and now that there was life in only four of the seven flats, it did not take long. It was raining heavily outside, and the prevailing atmosphere was grey and heavy.

The caretaker’s wife was in her flat in the basement, and nodded with relief when she heard the news that Darrell Williams was on his way back, and promised to make a note of when he arrived. Otherwise, she largely answered yes to all my questions. Everything was tranquil in the building now.

Andreas Gullestad opened his door almost as soon as I rang the bell, with his usual smile and offer of coffee and cake. He said that he had registered, with some anxiety, my visit earlier on in the day and that the lights in Darrell Williams’s flat had not come on later in the evening. He thanked me when I told him that Williams would be back the next day and assured me that he would be here and waiting for the final interviews over the course of the weekend. ‘I seldom go anywhere at the weekend, anyway,’ he commented, with his jovial smile and a chuckle. This sounded very familiar, but it took a couple of minutes before I realized that Patricia had made exactly the same point a few days earlier.

Mr and Mrs Lund came to the door together when I rang the bell, and proclaimed more or less in chorus that they had nothing more to say. Both appeared to be relieved when I told them that it looked as if the investigation would soon be over, and they promised to be available over the weekend. They informed me that they no longer dared to have their young son at home in the building and had therefore sent him to his grandparents in Bærum for Easter. Kristian Lund was in relatively good humour, having found a lawyer who thought that he had a strong case in terms of the will. His wife nodded in agreement, but added that the most important thing was that they still had each other and their little boy. Kristian Lund then said in a loud, clear voice that he deeply regretted having betrayed his wife and that he would never see Sara Sundqvist again. His wife put an affectionate arm round his waist and kissed him on the cheek. They seemed to be happy, and I really wanted to believe them. Yet I could not, completely. They had lied too much and failed to tell too much early on in the investigation.

I saved my visit to Sara Sundqvist until last. She opened the door a crack, with the safety chain still on. But when she heard my voice, she opened up and embraced me warmly. Sara was visibly tense. Her hands were shaking, and her heart was beating quickly: I could feel it through the thin material of her dress. She promised to stay at home all weekend, and had nothing new to tell me. Again, I really wanted to believe her, but no longer dared to take anything for granted in her case either.

There was a dramatic end to my visit, though, when Sara Sundqvist suddenly grabbed me by the arm and pointed out of the window.

‘Do you see that person in a dark trench coat down there on the pavement?’ she asked.

I started and looked to where she was pointing, and true enough, in the shadow of the neighbouring building stood a figure in a raincoat with a hood. Even though the light was dim, the coat was undeniably blue. It was either a man or a tall woman, but it was difficult to tell through the dark and rain.

Sara Sundqvist was either frightfully nervous or extremely good at pretending. It was apparently a great relief to her that I could also see the mysterious street guest in a raincoat.

‘Thank goodness it is not just my imagination running wild. Maybe it is merely a coincidence. It does seem rather strange that… that person has been standing there for several hours this afternoon. It wasn’t wrong of me to mention it to you, was it?’

I gave a reassuring shake of the head. It was definitely worth checking out. It may simply be someone from the neighbouring building who happened to be waiting there, or a journalist, or an overzealous newspaper reader. But it was undoubtedly odd that the person had been standing there for several hours – and, above all, was wearing a blue raincoat.

The person in the raincoat was standing still by his or her post when I took a final look out of the window with Sara. But when I then swung out onto the street following a hasty goodbye, the entrance to the neighbouring building was suddenly empty. I glanced briefly either way and caught sight of a figure in a raincoat and hood heading briskly towards the nearest bus-stop. I thought to myself that it was either a woman or a very light-footed man. Egged on by the thought that I may have caught sight of Deerfoot, I gave chase. The person in front of me noticed and picked up pace into a sprint. Just then, the bus pulled into the stop. The person in the raincoat ran for the bus and I ran after the person in the raincoat. As I closed in, I became certain that it was a woman running in front of me. A couple of moments later, the pursuit ended in confusion when she ran into the bus and I ran into her.

The bus drove on without the woman in the blue raincoat. A moment before she pushed down the hood, apologizing profusely, I recognized her. The long, fair locks of Cecilia Olesen tumbled into view.

She apologized for running away, and then for standing outside 25 Krebs’ Street, but it was nothing to do with anything criminal, she assured me. The reading of the will and then our conversation yesterday had rekindled old feelings and memories. She could find no peace at home, so she had asked a friend to babysit for the evening. And had stood here alone on the pavement, despite the rain, and stared at the building in the hope of catching a glimpse of Darrell Williams. She became more and more anxious as the hours passed and the flat remained in darkness. Then she panicked when I came out and started to follow her. Because it was dark, she had only recognized me when we collided at the bus – she said. She assured me that she had not been inside the building, neither today nor previously this year, either with or without a blue raincoat, which she maintained she had had for many years.